The Rowing Lesson Read Free Page B

candle- sticks wrapped in sheets and even the fading silk robe you were circumsized in is wrapped in tissue paper and sits in a box in your mother’s cupboard. When you were five you took it out and tried to put it on and your ma saw you and she give you a bloody good hiding. She was holding it up to see if it was torn and there was a tiny brown spot which must have been your blood, but she didn’t see it or say anything. She folded it and put it away and that was that.
    One day your son will wear the robe at his bris, and his son, and your daughter’s boy but you don’t know this. It will be the colour of tea by then, and the world will have capsized and righted itself, but none of this is what you’re thinking as the wind blows and Gertude crawls into the little prow of Wolfie’s boat. Bunny and Morry are singing, Daar kom die AliBama to keep warm and Maisie’s teeth are chattering. It’s a summer day at the Wilderness which can be a sorry, damp story for anybody. You have been rained on during picnics, in your father’s cars as they climb over the hills, between here and George and yes, on the river, so many times on the river. Of course your ma will be nervous about you getting sick, about your lungs and your heart, not to mention your nose, which points East then South, and has its own shadow. And that’s another reason why you want to become a doctor. You want to stop the consumption from galloping, the fevers from burning, your rickety knees from knocking. For your ma’s sake. She worries and you can see all her fears written on the walls, invisible but burning.
    YOU ROW TOWARDS the wide mouth of the river, where it flows into the sea under another, bigger railway bridge which edges a small golf course. For a tickey, you and the boys dive for lost golf balls from the bridge. But today there’s no golf and no diving, and the little village is sodden and sleeping.
    You are scared when you open the creaking gate, when you walk down the path to the front door. Maisie is behind you, her dress still wet. You and Morry and Bunny and the other girls pulled the boat up onto the grass near the mouth of the Wilderness lagoon and Morry drove all of you the ten miles back to George. It was getting dark when Morry’s father’s car struggled over the hills above the sea, when you looked down at the black water of the Kaaimans River. Maisie kept talking about the bloody tablecloth and you wanted to hit her, almost as much as you wanted to put your hand on the scratches, the thin red lines on the inside of Gertrude’s thighs. Gertrude was sitting in front, next to Morry and you could see the outline of her breast in the dark, a small mountain right there, right inside the car, that you wanted to climb and hold and conquer. The sound of the crickets and the smell of sea, the bit of forest, then the lights of the small town pulling you into its center, along its quiet, dark streets right up to your parents’ house, next to the shop, on the corner of Meade Street and Hibernia Street.
    You pass the banks of hydrangeas, their pale heads drooping in the moonlight, and you can hear the crackling radio from inside the house, a pukka English voice slicing syllables the way Nettie chops tomatoes. It’s ridiculous, you say to no one in particular. Maisie whispers, What? You say, One of these days I’m going to be a doctor! Maisie laughs, one of those infectious engine laughs that can make you wet your pants. You don’t look like one, she says. You wait and see! You open the door and now the two of you are inside the house, peering into the lounge. Your mother, Yetta, has her trim ankles crossed and she’s wearing beige shoes pocked with holes. You know her dress has big pale flowers and she has an apron over it but you keep your eyes fixed on the holes in her shoes. Joe, your father, fiddles with the radio and then turns it off.
    The food is cold, your mother says, and she’s shaking with rage. You sit down at the table,